Friday, November 30, 2012

Goldman: No recovery for Spain until 2015

Spain's large temp labor force (see discussion) should help reduce unemployment quickly, once recovery takes hold. But given the sorry state of the banking system (see post), when do economists actually expect Spain's economy to begin growing again? The latest forecast from Goldman shows that it will be some three years before even a modest real GDP growth should be expected.

Purple = forecast (source: GS)

What's amazing is that earlier this year many mainstream economists were projecting a "short and shallow" recession (see discussion). In fact economists have been consistently lowering their forecasts all year. The chart below from Goldman shows the consecutive worsening of the 2013 forecast for Spain's GDP growth.

Source: GS

Given Spain's limited ability to grow its debt levels (simply because the market and the EMU will not let them), the debt to GDP ratio is expected to level off just under 100% on a gross basis. And simply for reference (and many people will take issue with this comparison), the US is already at 100% debt to GDP on a gross basis.